vaultofthearchonfandomcom-20200214-history
110035-change-from-20-to-10-and-40-to-20-raids
Content ---- Instead of saying "lack of people on servers" (a possibly temporary problem), you might want to say, "cause of the more efficient logistics of attuning, gearing, and running with half as many people, even for less gear." Not saying I agree or disagree (I have no opinion on the matter yet, really), but you've got a better chance of getting something fixed in-game if it's a quickly implementable, long-term solution to a long-term problem. | |} ---- I, personally, would be happy to see scaled versions of the raids across the board. As in 10, 20 and 40 Man versions of all current and future raids. And before the hardcores jump in, no, of course they shouldn't all have the same loots. Stop that noise already. :P | |} ---- ---- ---- Really, though, the process of attuning for raids isn't the issue. It's gearing for raids. That's a much more important problem and will solve a lot of other issues in the game. It's also good they're reducing the attunement medal requirement to bronze. Kind of hoping they figure out a system for retroactive quest completion so that people don't have to rekill 10 world bosses when they're on that attunement step even if they've helped guildies kill 50 already to attune them. Just makes things easier. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- why would you waste time on statistically no one. do you remember why super massive raiding died? I do: logistics are a pain, encounter design is limited( it too easy to brute force kills), performance and aesthetics ( every boss has to be utterly massive to be visible over the blob of bodies and horrible acid trip of player spell effects) | |} ---- ---- Why not? Why is flexibility bad? Why is making content accessible to smaller groups bad? And again, before the uber-leets freak, I am talking about the same content with different loot tables and identical mechanics. Not "welfare epix" and "dumbed down" fights. | |} ---- ---- Because this game was announced as a game that has 40 player raids. Easy as that. Why alienate the people who bought the game for that reason. So I'd say add 20 and 10 people raids or whatever for the players who don't want or can't get 40 people together. | |} ---- WoW started with 40 man raiding. That was a horrible response and you know it. | |} ---- And it should have them. It DOES have them. Now, rework them for smaller groups, too. With identical mechanics, less epic lewts and more flexibility for smaller parties. WIN! | |} ---- ---- Please read my first post in this thread ;) I was just answering Geaux | |} ---- *ahem* Let me rephrase that for you | |} ---- ---- Because almost everyone is "on the path" toward 40 man raids, even those who never get there (the majority of players). But it provides the destination for the journey we are on. As long as we are enjoying the journey, that we don't arrive at the 40 mans doesn't bother me. And I love watching the videos and knowing that something that cool and epic is out there. | |} ---- aww c'mon it'd be so fun! Just imagine it! 300+ people in a massive epic fight for their life. I guess I'm jsut trying to advocate for world bosses that are more fun to do... | |} ---- Welcome to the minority. Even the players raiding in 40 man have spoke and said they prefer to not do 40 mans. The journey doesn't have to be getting there. Its weird you say that, why have a journey if you don't actually get there? Thats like setting a goal and expecting to fail. Its ironic really. | |} ---- My computer would have a hard enough time running 40 man raiding. Tell wildstar to get better optimization and donating a better computer to my funds and I'd be ok with world bosses being 300+ | |} ---- I will gladly build your computer for you if it brings more fun to the game for you and the player base! And yes optimization would be a wonderful thing | |} ---- Should I give you PO Box info you can send it to? | |} ---- sure! So Carbine lets get this on the roll shall we!? | |} ---- Because the journey is fun :) It's not ironic at all. Life is best experience as a journey, not an arrival. What I've read from raiders is that 40 mans are great. Yes, there's that big long thread over in raids. I don't know that that represents the general consensus though. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Why are 10s stupid? Were you like the one person who didn't enjoy Karazhan? There was 10 person content all the way back in vanilla WoW. I'm all for leaving current raids the way they are and developing future 20/40 man content (if the 40 man content proves to be worth it), but why shoot down 10 man content that would only bring more people to the game? I would love to play a karazhan style instance with WS combat mechanics. | |} ---- Then I hope that 5% will keep ncsoft happy long enough to afford having wildstar onboard and wildstar to live. You'd literally be looking at maybe 1 or 2 servers and that alone is expensive. Server merges or free server transfers need to happen as an alternative if they're going to be stubborn about this. | |} ---- As long as there is content for the non 5%, other people will play. They didn't say they were ONLY making content for the 5%. | |} ---- Lets be fair, alot of people came for the pvp. The pvp turned out to be a huge flop, alot left for pvp. So you can't count on a big population to help with pvp. Then lets look at housing fanatics, maybe 1-2% max as their goal. And then everyone else maybe 3-4%. This is completely guessing. So you have the PvE (non-raiding) population, which is maybe 5%, then the 1-2% for housing, and the 3-4% of other players who are just rotating in & out, then the 5% of raiding population that do more than just outside PvE. So 5+5+2+4=16% ish population, again just completely guessing, that leaves the population thats left the game about 84%. Now I"m sure those numbers are not exactly correct but I'd put money on that being right around that, possibly a population who's left between 60-84%. The game isn't alive as much as it used to be,because carbine is so stubborn. I'm a realist, not a dreamer sorry. We probably won't see eye to eye. Dreams only make reality if the goals of the dreams are met. | |} ---- I am fairly certain that the vast majority of the playerbase for W* did not come for the PvP. And Frankly I'm just going to put this out there; the PvP playerbase is weak and very small in the MMO community. They couldn't even keep what was arguably the best PvP MMO ever made afloat (WAR). This game (W*) was developed and intended for PvE players; with additional PvP opportunities. It was never designed to be a game where 84% of it's base was PvP nuts. (This all coming from a MMO PvP'r who played WAR till the end) | |} ---- I never said those missing %'s were pvp players, but a large portion of them were. It probably was understood that way due to my poor mis-wording. | |} ---- Actually, just from people I know, the PVPers are still around. They hung on longer than the raiders who weren't really raiders. They're put off by the exploitation. A lot of them are playing almost exclusively on the PTR when they can now, because the fixes fix so much (and fewer people bot on PTR) | |} ---- I want to see a 100 man raid. That would be amazing to see. The first guild to achieve that should get like a trophy or something. | |} ---- that would be great if it would take any effort at all to find outcry that the journey want horribly lacking. hell it not like carbine hasn't spent a great deal of time since open beta backtracking on their misguided design philosophy. yeah and that is a great business model if carbine went with a super premium model. there are unfortunately cost of operations that are static and need to be deraid over a player base or do you think the 5% will be able to fork out $200-$300 a month to keep the revenue on track? | |} ---- Have you SEEN warplots?? I haven't either. | |} ---- Really don't know what you are talking about regarding backtracking. They've made some tweaks here and there, but it seems to me the core vision is still alive and well. I know loads of people really enjoying the journey; my closest friends in game have no intention of ever raiding 20 man, let alone 40 man, but they are still having a blast. This game has the most enjoyable 5 man content I've ever played, and they will be adding more in the future. | |} ---- Hey don't forget the credd too, maybe an extra 100$ Serious talk, thats my exact point. They can't keep the company running on the 5%, but as previously stated it wouldn't just be that 5% Even if its not just that 5%, say 20% of the pop right now stays throughout the games lifespan, lets be generous and estimate 20,000 players stick around, this includes NA and EU. 20000x15=300000. Then add in whatever other credd sources. Thats being generous too. 300,000 sounds like alot, but a company like carbine paired with ncsoft can't survive with 300k a month. If they were making 300k a month from 10k players, maybe. The game had a good goal but it needs to do much more than just the rare stragglers and the 5% hardcore playerbase. Other MMO's that have done this exact thing don't last long, this is why all MMO's nowadays need to cater to a casual base too. Not an unskilled playerbase, but a casual, less time constraint. Alot of things can contribute to this. I could be completely wrong and wildstar can perhaps support that rare hardcore playerbase, but being paired with ncsoft that isn't going to happen. | |} ---- ---- Youre acting as if only its the 5% who are playing the game right now. Right now, it is nowhere close to that. There will always be a fan base for this great game. Cheers | |} ---- PVP in WAR was amazing, but the PVP implementation was absolutely terrible. I know many many people left the game due to the matchmaking system and the disproportionate rewards for people who won vs lost. Sounds familiar, actually. | |} ---- What about people who enjoy leveling and playing alts? Personally, I play this mainly for the 5 man content. I know lots of others who are the same. I'm hoping they will create a 10 man at some point, but I know so far they've said "no" to that. I can live without it, but I know I'd enjoy it. But it's cool to be a bystander while the hardcore tackle the 20 and 40 mans. | |} ---- I was thinking along the lines of like a giant open world server raid, that I guess ummm for sake of familiarity could be equated to a more elaborate version of when the gates of Ahn'Qiraj opened OR have encouraged capital city invasions! Something really epic feeling | |} ---- ---- City raids would be great! First Carbine needs to nerf the insanity that is the guards around the cities though. | |} ---- Uh... that sounds like a design failure. The same could be said about any encounter size if the encounter itself allows people to simply kill it. | |} ---- No way. Why? | |} ---- Do you honestly think the 5% of the playerbase is more than 10k players? You're out of your mind if you think the "hardcore" PvE players are more than 10k players. Thats why I said I was being generous at 20k. | |} ---- EVE Online survived just ten years ago on 25k subscriptions Carbine's not Blizzard. I don't think we can really judge "successs" that way. Nor is it a good idea. Good ideas you recommend should be good ideas with ten thousand or ten million subscribers, good ideas need to stand on their own. You really shoot yourself in the foot making any kind of argument on the game as if it's a reaction to panic. | |} ---- Doesn't eve make money other ways as well? Or is it just pure subs + a credd mechanic? If so I take back everything I said, but what you also have to remember is that NCsoft is NCsoft. If carbine doesn't bring enough money in for them, won't they just cut them? Then what happens to carbine? Do they just disappear or do they operate independently? | |} ---- And NCSoft is not CCP Games. CCP Games is majority held by the game developers. This means they can do whatever the Hell they want with EVE -- run it for low profit, or NO profit, or shut it down at any time on a whim. NCSoft is a public company. They are legally required to try to provide value for their shareholders. If the shareholders think that NCSoft's board is making terrible business decisions, there will be serious real-world consequences, starting with job loss, and, if the mismanagement is serious enough, criminal charges. Right now NCSoft is overall quite profitable, so it can sustain losses for some time based on that. But it cannot sustain losses indefinitely. If Wildstar is not profitable, they will have to kill it or the shareholders will kick them out and put in a board that will. If Wildstar is only marginally profitable, it will live only as long as there aren't better uses for NCSoft's capital funds than keeping it up. The instant NCSoft thinks it has found a better (as in, more profitable) use for its funds than keeping Wildstar up, Wildstar will fold. As an interesting side note: word has it that NCSoft has recently returned to talks to sell City of Heroes to some of its fans so they can continue to run it as a private game. If that happens, and if it works, well, three years down the road maybe the Hardcores can buy Wildstar and run it for themselves, who knows? It's mostly just the game -- it's CCP's one product. There's some talk of monetizing it through merchandise tie-ins but it hasn't happened yet. There are rumors of money being made through RMT of course.... Carbine is wholly owned by NCSoft. NCSoft owns all the software licenses and the name "Carbine". A bunch of devs could quit and start up a new company, but they couldn't run Wildstar unless they bought it from NCSoft (see "CoH") and they couldn't call themselves Carbine Studios. The couldn't, technically, take any of their software developed at Carbine with them, either, but those rules aren't too difficult to get around -- I think you just need 10% new code or some such to evade that rule. But the names "Wildstar" and "Carbine" belong to NCSoft, as do all associated trademarks and copyrights. | |} ---- Pretty much. They have a sort of cash shop on another currency (called AUR), which I think makes extra money selling cosmetic items. That was launched lately. Really, what does a game need to operate? Servers, electricity, pay the developers, etc. Making the game is expensive as an investment, but to run a game is pretty profitable. FFXI, low as its sub numbers have kind of always been, is the most profitable FF game ever. Of course, that bumps into this... Which is true. Carbine's fine, the game is almost certainly profitable, but how much does NCSoft want and how much do they consider "successful"? We don't know. I've said it a couple times, but NCSoft may not consider profitable to be profitable enough at 2-3 million subs by years' end. They may be in for the long term. We don't know. I'm kind of worried they'll drop into the forums and start taking us seriously. I don't mind that Carbine listens, but I really don't want NCSoft to think the game is beyond coming back. They're the ones with the axe, and they get to set the bar. Honestly, though, if it wasn't for NCSoft, I'd completely have no issues with Carbine running the game as they have. CCP didn't just make money, they made the 6th most profitable MMORPG in the world last year with 500k subs, and they've been profitable enough to fund two further games and their since cancelled World of Darkness MMORPG. Plus my character name is on that rock in Iceland they built to their own egos. MMORPGs, after initial development, are very profitable even with less than a million subs. | |} ---- Ok so in that, can NCsoft let go of carbine and will carbine be able to hold onto wildstar assuming profit is made? | |} ---- In theory, yes. In practice, I doubt they'll do it that way. If Wildstar fails, NCSoft will pull the plug or restaff Carbine with yes men and make the game into a cash shop machine. If Wildstar succeeds to their liking, they'll keep it going. But the City of Heroes debacle proves they're willing to pull the plug on a game and sit on the license, which would likely be Wildstar's fate if they don't think it'll live on as a F2P game that requires a lot of microtransactions. | |} ---- Hm, do you really think that Wildstar is going to have even one million subs by years' end, let alone two or three million? FFXIV has two million, but that's from a longstanding, well-beloved IP, and they have a monopoly on PS console MMO players, advantages Wildstar does not have and is not going to have. Also, they had the opportunity to make all their screw ups and start over and were able to come back, begging hat in hand, to get another chance to do it right. I'm not sure Wildstar will get this kind of a chance, though it would be utterly fascinating to see what Carbine would come up with if they did! In any case I think expecting even a million subs by year's end is wildly optimistic. You might hit 500k if you count all the CREDD sales as "subs", which they are in terms of bottom line. (Not in terms of actual player participation, in most cases, but NCSoft could care less about that, probably.) And I don't think you need to worry about NCSoft looking at the forums; they have professionals with access to real data and high-powered financial forecasting software. That's how they knew to downgrade Wildstar's expected initial take from 35 mil to 25 mil, and they came very close to hitting the exact amount Wildstar brought in. You can bet that what NCSoft is looking at are real numbers laid out lovingly in detailed worksheets by their financial investment people. They could care less what we players on the forums think or say. They'll be looking at the trendlines on their spreadsheets, and that's what will matter. Period. As a side note, they probably do have people keeping a loose eye on the game's overall buzz, but that's just a small piece of the puzzle, usually used to estimate if the trendlines are likely to change in the near future. It doesn't matter next to the actual business done. | |} ---- To be fair if wildstar went f2p that honestly wouldn't be a bad decision. Will it gate alot of content behind a paywall? Yes, but I've always though wildstar could benefit from it. Do it somewhat similar to rift. If we ever see future expansions/classes gate those behind a paywall, but keep the base game free, put special decor items in the cash shop, exp/prestige/rep flasks that would increase gain. Etc etc. Wildstar always felt off with a sub model, but its whatever, Id probably pay the same amount if not more on a f2p game with a cash shop. | |} ---- I feel like a lot of people miss these arguments and will ultimately push NCSoft into making a business decision because they won't allow any of the content to lose it's tedious nature. | |} ---- I don't think you could be more wrong. If you think "Gated" content is bad now, just wait until you get to deal with the current gear system as it is or pay real cash to get the gear. That's how those games work and generate money. | |} ---- I disagree. Rift you could buy gear, but it was very expensive to get caught up to the current raiding tier, even with the first tier of storm legion buying a full set of expert dungeon gear was expensive, upwards of 100$ I think. The current gear system I'm still not 100% sure how everything works, but I understand the basics & a bit more. No company should ever make you pay for gear behind a paywall to be on current, if you can't get it anywhere else thats asking for trouble. Gear right now is already as hard as it is to get pre-raid beyond rep which just takes time. I'm not sure what you're pointing at here. | |} ---- ---- ----